Replies to post #3034 on Simply Politics and News (GOV)

[dropdeadfred]

Friday, May 21, 2004 5:17 p.m. EDT
Tony Blair: Can't Remember Meeting John Kerry

Scratch Tony Blair off the list of possible "foreign leaders" who want to see John Kerry elected president.

Kerry has said that he had received enordorsements from foreign leaders he had personally met.

When pressed to name names, Kerry said the endorsements were confidential, and that he bumped into foreign leaders in all sorts of places, including restaurants in New York.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair released the following statement today:

Asked if the Prime Minister had ever met Senator John Kerry, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) said he didn't know.

He pointed out that the Prime Minister and Mr Kerry had hoped to have a meeting during the Prime Minister's recent visit to Washington, but unfortunately Mr Kerry had been out of town on the day.

[nycnpbbkr]

Ex-green beret to Kerry: 'You are a liar'
Scathing column makes rounds on Net, Vietnam vets cheer approval

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: February 26, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern


By Ron Strom
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

A former Special Forces green beret who served in Vietnam has touched a nerve with fellow veterans after penning a scathing column hammering Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

"I've been deluged with e-mails," Don Bendell told WND. Most of the e-mails and phone calls he's received are from fellow Vietnam veterans, though he says some are from military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Take a look at my website," Bendell said, "and the number of guest-book entries."

Bendell says the servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan who have contacted him have been "fervent" about their desire not to see Kerry as their commander in chief.

In his column, Bendell accuses Kerry of "rewriting history" through his 1971 testimony to Congress. In that speech, which has been referenced by many opponents of Kerry, he said of fellow soldiers in Vietnam: "They personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."

Writes Bendell:


I was a green beret officer who volunteered for duty in Vietnam and fought in the thick of it in 1968 and 1969 on a Special Forces A-team on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, just for starters. We were the elite. We saw the most action. Everybody in the world knows that. But we did not just kill people; we built a church, a school, treated illnesses, passed out soap, food and clothing, and had fun and loving interaction with the indigenous people of Vietnam, just like our boys did in Normandy, Baghdad, Saigon and everywhere American soldiers ever served. We all gave away our candy bars and rations to kids, our hearts to oppressed people all over the globe.
My children and grandchildren could read your words and think those horrendous things about me, Mr. Kerry. You are a bald-faced, unprincipled liar and a disgrace, and you have dishonored me and all my fellow Vietnam veterans. Sure, there were a couple bad-apples, but I saw none, and I saw it all, and if I did, as an army officer, it was my obligation to stop it, or at the very least report it. Why is there not a single record anywhere of you ever reporting any incidents like this or having the perpetrators arrested? The answer is simple. You are a liar. Your medals and mine are not a free pass for lifetime, Sen. Kerry, to bypass character, integrity and morality. I earn my green beret over and over daily in all aspects of my life.

Since it was first posted on Feb. 11, Bendell's column has been passed all over the world via e-mail and has been posted on several different websites.

Besides criticizing Kerry's testimony before Congress, Bendell slams him for opposing a bill that would have helped the Montagnard people of Vietnam:


John Kerry, you personally derailed the Vietnam Human Rights Bill, H.R.2883, in 2001, after it had passed the House by a 411 to 1 vote, and thousands of pro-American Montagnard tribespeople in Vietnam died since then who could have been saved, by you. Earlier, as chair of the Senate Select Committee on MIA/POW Affairs, you personally quashed the efforts of any and all veterans to report sightings of living POWs, when you held those reins in Congress. You have fought tooth and nail to push for the U.S. to normalize relations with Vietnam for years. Why, Mr. Kerry? Simple, your first cousin C. Stewart Forbes, CEO of Colliers International, recently signed a contract with Hanoi, worth BILLIONS of dollars for Collier's International to become the exclusive real estate representative for the country of Vietnam.
Bendell says he has an expose coming out in the April issue of American Spectator that further details his charges against the senator.

In talking with WND, the veteran also criticized Kerry for marrying two women who happened to be multibillionaires: "I'm sure that it was true love," he said.

Emphasizing the fact his opinions do not represent any organization, Bendell mentioned he has been involved in non-political veteran groups, including a stint as president of the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Special Forces Association.

He says he tells Democrats to vote for John Edwards in the primaries: "Just don't vote for Kerry."

Bendell, who has spoken on many radio shows since his column gained popularity, is the author of several books and owns karate studios in Colorado.

The parting shot from Bendell in his column: "Medals do not make a man. Morals do."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37300

[BullNBear52]

DDF not as long as some of your posts on Kerry.
A Routine Burst of Chaos Leaves a G.I. Wounded
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 25 — A homemade missile launcher propped up in an apartment window let forth a volley, and an American soldier lay moaning and bleeding, grasping for her life.

The scene repeats itself so often in the Iraqi capital these days that it hardly goes remarked upon, particularly when the soldier, like nearly 4,700 other soldiers since combat operations began, is only wounded.

But in the chaotic minutes that followed the rocket attack on the Sadoon Police Station on Tuesday, the many strands of the war raging between the guerrillas and Americans seemed to run together.

The unidentified American soldier, a young military police officer, was carried from the gate by her four comrades, nervous, jittery men whose fear seemed to throb in their eyes. The wounded soldier writhed in her own blood and shrieked, her voice climbing and ebbing suddenly as if she had run out of breath.

"Hold on, we'll be there in 10 minutes," one soldier said, lifting her onto the hood of their Humvee as a crowd of Iraqis gathered and the police waved their guns.

The soldiers gripped their rifles and gritted their teeth, and the Humvee rolled slowly forward. They steadied the soldier's splayed body on the bouncing vehicle.

In the madness, it was not even certain that the American was the target. The 10-story apartment building from which the missiles were fired, and which stood next to the Iraqi police station, offered a clear shot at the Green Zone, the heavily guarded American compound just across the Tigris River.

The missiles were fired at 4:15 p.m., setting off a series of loud booms that echoed through the Baghdad streets.

One of the missiles hit a water tank atop the Sadoon Police Station, the explosion tearing into the American soldier who was on guard duty on the roof. Another arced toward the Green Zone, crossing one of the main thoroughfares, then the Tigris, and landed just shy of the compound's high cement walls.

Two other missiles went their own ways, flying off to uncertain destinations in the teeming streets.

When the attack had ended, the Iraqi police found the empty missile launcher in the elevator well of the apartment building's fifth floor. It was a jury-rigged contraption, made of metal tubes and wires and welded onto a steel frame. The missiles, the police said, probably came from one of the country's many unguarded ammunition dumps. As American soldiers have discovered time and again, some of the deadliest weapons used against them cost no more than a few dollars to make.

"We were all surprised about the same thing," said Navra Nissan, 23, who lives on the fifth floor. "We were all wondering how it happened, and nobody knows."

Ms. Nissan's response is the typical one given by Iraqis after an attack on American soldiers. Nobody knows or, if they do, they aren't saying.

But the Iraqi police at the station here seemed to put considerable credence in the denials, if only because of the character of the neighborhood itself, called Bataween. It is a mixed neighborhood, with a large Christian population. It is just a few blocks from the statue of Saddam Hussein that was pulled down on the day that Baghdad fell to the Americans. The police said the area had never known an attack.

"If I had seen it, I would have reported it," said Khansa Abed, 22, who was sitting with her two nieces when she heard the explosions. "It's a residential area. They shouldn't do that here. This is not a battlefield."

But this city has changed much in the 15 months since the American soldiers arrived. Even neighborhoods that welcomed the troops at the fall of Saddam Hussein now come out to cheer when they die. Some said they had heard talk of leaflets warning neighbors of an attack against the police station. There was no way to know.

The Iraqi police, nearly all of them sporting American-supplied Glock pistols, said a group of insurgents had hid their homemade missile launcher inside a "swamp cooler," an appliance popular with many Iraqis that blows air cooled by water. The insurgents lugged their gadget up the five flights, parked it next to the window, set the timer and ran off.

Residents said the insurgents probably set up the launcher just after lunch, when most Iraqis were sleeping off the afternoon heat.

"Everyone was asleep," said Hamid Abdul, 65. "We heard the explosions. We closed the door and hid in our front room. We thought we were being attacked."

In a way, they were. When the missiles flew forth from their perch on the window, someone, either the Americans or the Iraqi police, opened fire, spraying the apartment with gunfire. The pockmarks from the bullets dotted the walls around the fifth-floor window. Someone threw a smoke grenade, sending up a cloud of opaque gas.

Ibrahim Abdullah, 45, said he was sitting on his balcony when he saw one of the missiles hit the top of the police station.

"There was an American soldier on the roof," he said.

Within minutes of the attack, and as the Humvee rolled down the street with the soldier on its hood, a Black Hawk helicopter appeared in the sky, displaying a large Red Cross on its side, circling Bataween's crowded warrens for a place to land. An Iraqi policeman fired over the heads in the crowd. The helicopter disappeared behind a row of buildings.

"Get back!" an American soldier screamed.

Later in the day, a spokesman for the First Cavalry Division said the soldier had suffered shrapnel wounds to her leg and that she had lost her right arm from the forearm down. He did not give her name.

Ayad Salman, the ranking Iraqi officer at the station, directed his men back to their posts. Mr. Salman seemed a tired man, his face drawn, perhaps by the loss of too many friends. He tried to lead a visitor into a conversation about his country's future which, for him, seemed only dark.

"What do you think?" Mr. Salman asked, Kalashnikov rifle in hand. "I think Iraq needs 10 years, and then there will be peace.

"Because in 10 years, finally, all the Iraqis will be dead," he said.


Ian Fisher contributed reporting for this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26MAYH.html?pagewanted=print&position...